Currently doing (on fabric)

Pics from hospital

Thank you Kate!

I had to start work again today - fortunately my boss is letting me do half-days until I feel more on my feet.

So I came home at lunch-time, to find a fabric postcard in my mailbox from Kate who blogs here. I burst into tears.

Kate, I don't know how to thank you... it's gorgeous, just the sort of thing I love and the gesture touched me so deeply.

Thanks to the other people who have emailed me - I am going to reply, but the ole brain is just a bit slow these days...

Nothing today

Too much despair.

Please, Universe

I NEED a new job. I am so tired, so unfulfilled, so stressed when we are busy, so resentful of all the time and energy my current job robs from me every day. I can't just resign, I'm the breadwinner and have to earn.
I am worth it. I am a hard and thinking worker. I am intelligent. I am worth a decent salary. I am tired of being in a profession (nursing) that is viewed like glorified waitresses and paid pathetically, expected to work ridiculous hours and accorded very little respect. I feel robbed of the future that I thought I would have once I finished my hard-earned degree. Ok, I was naive then and it was my choice. But now I want to make a new choice.

Artmaking alone is not a realistic money-earning job for me. It may become an add-on and will always be a passion, but I need something that will dependably earn me enough to manage on, or the anxiety over money alone will completely paralyse me.

So please, Universe, I'm putting it out there. I need a new job.

Have to tell you something funny...

I knew it would make a good story afterwards. The hospital I was in, also does a lot of rehab of alcoholics and addicts, so they search all your stuff when you come in. I had packed my usual array of scissors (those for paper, those for fabric, those little ones for threads, you know what I mean), my needle book with thick needles, thin needles, the ones for beading etc etc, and a box of pins, and some works-in-progress(WIPs), threads etc. (Oh and a few clothes, shampoo, soap, toothbrush.)

Contraband! Dangerous sharp objects! A depressive with sharp objects is a huge red flag. Scissors, needles and pins were all confiscated and locked away in the office. Imagine my chagrin! In one swift move most of the equipment that constitutes my identity was locked up. I MEAN, who am I without needles, pins and scissors??? (Just as well I didn't bring my iron!). The scissors I understood, but what were they thinking: Suicide by acupuncture??? I had never realised us fibre art types lived so close to the edge!

The following morning, I began to wonder how on earth I was going to work on anything. Luckily I found a NEEDLE parked in one of my WIPs. Oooooo! I looked left. I looked right. Feeling like a naughty girl I sat quietly and sewed. They didn't seemed perturbed by the fairly normal sight of someone sitting sewing. (Even WITH a needle!) So far, so good. Now all I needed was a sharp edge on which I could cut the next piece of thread...

Sharp edges are hard to come by in psychiatric institutions. You can rub the thread against various edges, but you get a horrible fuzzy end that is impossible to thread through the eye of a fine needle (most certainly not aided by the tremors caused by a new anti-depressant...)

Then I scratched again amongst the belonging they had let me keep. I'd also packed some drawing/painting materials and among them a PENCIL SHARPENER! Spread the word! This innocent little gadget is the answer for those long airplane trips where they won't let you have scissors. The little blade on a pencil sharpener, while not lethal enough to hijack planes, hold hostages, inflict suicidal damage to oneself or homicidal damage to anyone else, actually works pretty well to cut a thread!!

I was up and running. After a while I realised they weren't planning to give me back my weapons of mass destruction until I left (I guess other people might try to steal them with more evil intentions than sewing....) so I just gave up and soldiered on with my one needle and my pencil sharpener. And it worked just fine. That, of course, did a great deal for my sanity, and a pencil sharpener is a lot cheaper than seeing a psychiatrist or a psychologist, I can assure you... 'cause I did that too.

So now you know. Run off quickly to the stationers and make sure you have a little pencil sharpener just in case one of your little eccentricities turns into a raging psychosis in the night and the men in white coats come to escort you away. Or even if you just develop what they call "the common cold of psychiatry": depression.

But!
Fuzzy brain an' all, I did discover the pencil sharpener scissors! :)

Slowly, slowly

I am dreading going back to work on Tuesday. I've been doing various psychological exercises, some art, (will post photos as soon as I can locate camera borrowed by daughter) and a heck of a lot of wondering why on earth I am here. Found out yesterday I had reached the limits of various funds on my medical aid from my little jaunt to the loony bin. (It's true what they say: money can't buy happiness but you sure can get to be miserable in comfort!) Had I known how much it would all cost I might have opted... um... some other option, but let's not go there.

Now follows a round of motivation letters from doctors, treatment plans, progress reports, "ex gratia" submissions - man, I've gone from being an eccentric but fairly normal person to being a 'case' about whom various reports are being written, faxed and emailed around. (What are they saying about me? Is it time to develop paranoia too?) ;)

One day at a time is the order of the day.

Construction - please be patient

I solemnly swear that it is not only the neural networks of my own brain that are FUBAR. I am trying to interface these with Blogger and Picasa to try to set up a gallery of sorts on my blog. Please be patient as various unintended and strange things happen, until I get it right. (They really shouldn't let computer-illiterates like us loose on the Web now, should they???)

Edit (later): It works! I figured it out! I have a new toy! It is very incomplete, unorganised, in random order, uncaptioned etc etc, but I can do a bit at a time and eventually there will be a way people can see the sort of work I do without having to wade through tons of old posts. (I always go to the galleries first if there is such a link, and have always wanted my own.)

Note to self: Yesterday I was accepted for Inno 2008. Today I got my long-desired gallery slideshow started up. Good things are happening to me. I WILL work on focusing on the positive.

Meanwhile, has anyone seen my marbles anywhere?

Inno 2008 - I'm in!

I'm sobbing as I write this, but these are very, very happy tears. I just heard that I have been juried into Innovative Threads 2008. I've entered three times and been accepted all three times. Could I interpret this as a sign that I absolutely must keep going through each day, not only for the sake of my children, but also for my art?

Bloody, bowed, but still the captain of my soul

I'm back from hospital. The medical aid only covered 14 days. But I'm not sure any more time there would have made much difference - it was basically to figure out what path to put me on. I'm still feeling dreadful so won't be blogging much until I feel I can say something positive. There is enough gloom in the world without me adding more negativity.

When I started this blog I was so determined to keep any mention of my recurrent depression to a strict and casual minimum, but recently the depth of the despair has just engulfed me. I'm sorry.

Maybe later I'll have the courage to post pics of the art I did in hospital and in the lead-up to it, but it's gloomy and I don't want to bring anyone down. Like my psychotherapist showed me, you get what you focus on, and your thoughts have such a major influence on how you feel, that I've decided I need to deliberately work on beautiful, uplifting works to balance the gloom a little...

... because I do want to contribute beauty and happiness to this world. I'm leaving the unfinished depressive works aside for now (I do want to finish them at some stage, because I feel they are authentic and also deserve to be heard) but I am now starting on a fabric art journal with uplifting images, bright colours and maybe even prettiness {{gasp!}}

Depression is a very lonely kind of hell, so thanks once again for the support received in emails, comments, sms'es, personally etc ... so often, kind words are all you have left to cling to and I have clung to many of yours. And that includes all the kind staff and other patients, several of whom became friends, in hospital. And especially my psychotherapist who has the ability to cut to the chase and challenge me, in such a kind way.

Gratefully,
Karen

Going to hospital again

I had an appointment with a psychologist in our nearest town (1.5hrs away) today. I'll be going into hospital (again) from tomorrow for a week or two. I feel a bit stunned at the sudden decision, but actually relieved to not have to fight this darkness on my own. I was barely hanging on.

Happy artmaking, everyone; see you when I get back.

New vessel done

"Bind Me Together"
April 2008
Fabric vessel. Fabric scraps, threads, beads.

See this post for the process of making this. On top is a row of fabric beads made by wrapping and stitching scraps together into a sphere about 2-3cm in diameter and then attaching seed beads individually.
I feel as if my life is in tatters. My depression is worse than before I went into hospital last year and I'm struggling to cope with things I KNOW I have found very easy before. I feel like I want to keep excusing myself and saying "but I'm not usually like this, I'm usually more together..."

The "observer consciousness" part of me finds it very apt that this bowl has arisen from this desperate time of trying to hold everything together. Many tears fell onto this work. I followed some (very tattered) instincts and several times along the way I wanted to give up as I thought the result would be too ugly, but I can't sit and do nothing, so I just kept on - and now that it is done, I really like it, because... it speaks for me. It witnesses. It's proof. It's tatty and organic and raw and rich and chaotic and a lot like me. And I like it.

And that ought to make me feel good, so why, I wonder, do I still feel as though I am stumbling around in a very long, dark night....?

Burning Man and creativity

In a recent issue of FiberArts magazine, there was an article about the Burning Man festival held in the Nevada desert, USA every year. I just finished reading a fascinating article about the Art of Burning Man by Darryl van Rhey. Some very, very interesting thinking and quite affirming to read as someone (an 'outsider') who is unschooled in art but has a "burning"(excuse pun) desire to make art all the time...

My Inno 2008 entry

I didn't think I was going to be able to get it together this year, but I felt so sad to let the chance slip by, that I managed to make an effort after all - I've entered Innovative Threads 2008. It's a wonderful annual South African Fibre Art exhibition (when I first heard of it and saw some of the works I would never in my wildest dreams have thought I could ever be part of it) and this year Tonya has taken it back to Cape Town to Margie Garratt's gorgeous exhibition space, Nova Constantia Cellars. Here is a review from the 2006 exhibition (I wasn't in it) held there.

They have a theme this year: "The only journey worth taking is the journey within" which I feel ambivalent about, but I really would love the opportunity to be juried in again and if I don't enter, I have NO chance...
My entry is called "Viral Load". It is a free-hanging work and represents a model of the Human Immunodeficiency Virus. The little dolls inside are (hopefully!) recognisable as derived from Edvard Munch's "Scream".
There is a mirror inside at the back, so you see your own reflection when you peer inside.
I am very reluctant to explain this work as I really want each person to make their own interpretation. It can be interpreted in several ways and I don't want to impose anything and risk stunting how you see it. The HIV/AIDS topic is a hot and highly relevant one in South Africa and I just want to contribute to the debate...

Marking time

... waiting for medication to work. Sorry, no pics today, but I have completed the scrap wors basket and slow progress is being made on a few other projects. I'll be back.

Scrap wors

I was looking at my bag of scrap-scraps (bits of fabric and thread that are too small to do anything with, such as the 5cm ends of threads you cut off when piecing or teeny bits of fabric cut off when squaring off etc - I keep everything) and I've figured out another way to use them.

Ingredients: Aforementioned scraps and some spools of thread (do not use your nice threads - the very cheap ones are fine.) You can use any threads.
Pick up some scraps and start winding the thread around them to make a sausage. Keep going, wrapping the thread around the scraps as much as is needed to hold them together. Do this until the sausage is about a half to one metre long (longer than that becomes really unwieldy to handle.) And you'll have a handful of sausage, or "wors" as it's called here in SA.

I thought I'd make another bowl, so I began coiling the wors and have just finished the base below and am about to start going up the sides. It's good for the state my brain is in at the moment (still not better) and goes well with mindless TV - and at the end I will (hopefully) have a fairly solid, useable bowl.

Rosalie has a website!

... where you can see some of her quilts. Exquisite. I'm very taken by her work and up close it is even more beautiful. She is teaching quite a bit in the USA these days. She has a wealth of skill, insight and experience - take a class with her if you ever get the chance! www.rosaliedace.co.za

Emmy Schoonbeek

I've blogged about her before, but she's worth another mention :) I love going over to her blog, Cramzy to see what she has been doing; I find it all very inspiring. She does a lot of embroidery and embellishing and has one of those needlepunching machines and puts it to great use.
Highly recommended! Emmy is from Holland.
-and I was very, very honoured to see that I am listed in her sidebar: thanks Emmy!

(and, yes, the timestamp is correct, I've been waking at about 2am every morning and unable to get back to sleep...)

Easy weekend

'Twas a slow weekend by us....

But some of us did find enjoyment in the fabric stashes:

Soft drink cans

I'm quite enthralled by the number of colours you can find on soft drink cans. This is a *small* selection! I could get sucked into trying to make something with the fronts instead of the backs...
(This is not fibre art. Sorry.)

(Aside: Began Cymbalta today. Black hole here, please, please a bit of respite?)

In the Meantime

I'm still churning out fabric beads, collecting tin cans and cutting them up for my second piece in the Armour series and painting some cloth to make a background for my Tri-Nations Challenge entry. I have decided on the poastcard I'm sending to Cyber Fyber so just need to get that parcelled up and taken to the post office.

Otherwise I'm not doing so great. So let's keep the focus on the fibre, shall we?

Padfolio

A couple of weeks ago, I made this padfolio, from the Free Projects on Fibre and Stitch, by Sue Bleiweiss. It has an exam pad inside, with some pockets for pens etc. The biggest compliment came from my younger daughter who asked if she could borrow it and take it to school with her! High praise indeed.
Of course I didn't follow the instructions exactly, as I always think I can see another way. All I can say is that next time I WILL be doing it just as she says, as I now understand WHY. But I always have to pick the hard path to learning.

More block printing

After printing with the last block of polystyrene from a vegetable tray, I found a larger piece of polystyrene and wanted to cut deeper so there'd be less smudging of the print. What to cut polystyrene with? I took the problem to my nightly mind-wanderings where I determined that the ideal would be a heat tool - now what did I already have that could serve this purpose. A soldering iron! It worked really nicely and I burnt (melted) out a pattern, rolled fabric paint onto it with my little craft foam roller and printed. Hey presto! Much easier than screenprinting. Now, with the next pattern I want to draw a design that matches up along the edges and try to print seamlessly
I didn't much like the result of the green flour resist I did earlier, so it proved to be the ideal cloth to overprint, and I think it looks much better now.
Fun, fun.
One of my daughter's blood test's came back very low, so we now have a further test on Friday to see if this could the problem (being deliberately vague here to protect her privacy.) Dare I hope for an answer, at last?

Flour resist - 2 takes

Two takes on the flour resist technique I mentioned earlier, after washing and ironing. The first is brown on white fabric and the one below is blue and brown on a previously dyed purple fabric. I really, really like this effect. It's batik-like without all the fuss with melting wax and then trying to get it out again.
Today we venture south-west to our closest town to see my daughter's endocrinologist - hopefully he has some explanation for why she is feeling so rotten all the time. He is going to give us the results of the gazillion blood tests he did last time. I woke up at 2am. My depression has headed south again.

Fabric printing

Bought this wonderful book a few weeks ago. It shows several techniques, and I've been trying them out. I did a screenprinting course many years ago and loved what I could do with it, but I'm too impatient now to sit and paint the screen with shellac, and I don't have the equipment and emulsion to use the photographic technique. So when I saw this, I was delighted!
You cut out the bottom of a polystyrene tray (such as veges are sometimes packed in)
(I taped some "handles" to the underside, so I could hold them.)
... and then you scribble patterns into the styrofoam with a pen or whatever. Roll on paint and print away.
It prints imperfectly, but I like the charm of it. And you get better as you do it more.

Embossing cooldrink can metal

When I can't fall asleep (which is often) I lie in bed and think "what if" sort of things and try to let my mind free-wheel in a kind of brainstorming mode where no ideas are silly or unfeasible. Often in this frame of mind, solutions come to mind. I was lying trying to think of all the possible ways I could make impressions in the cooldrink can metal I've been working with - and it suddenly occured to me: an engraver! Of course! Luckily our local library has an engraver, that one can borrow on one's library card, so here it is and it works just fine. I do have to set it on the highest setting to get it to make a decent imprint, but it is way better than having to press hard with your hands, which I can't do at this stage anyway.

So I've been fishing cooldrink cans out of bins, especially on campus, where there are always rich pickings. If you spot me looking in a bin and reaching a hand inside, it's not that I've fallen on hard times and am looking for food, I'm just scavenging for art materials!!

18 today!

Today my firstborn turns 18. (Of course I'm not a day older.)
Happy Birthday Love!
- from your mom who clearly wasn't thinking at all when she said "yes, of course you can invite 42 people over for supper and a party..."

Like they say.. It's irresistable

The article on flour resist dyeing in the latest Quilting Arts is called "It's irresistable!" I had intended to leave the paint to cure for longer (since it's covered in flour, you can't really heat-set it, so you have to let time do the work) but yesterday my curiosity got the better of me and I couldn't resist throwing caution to the winds and washing out some of the flour, at the risk of losing the paint. (I didn't lose the paint.)
Now I wish I hadn't done it on a white background! I think I'll overpaint it with a transparent lighter colour, to colour the background, without losing the etching-like scratches. I have another piece drying at the moment, which I had previously dyed and have now overdyed.

What a lot of fun. Love it when the Quilting Arts inspires me to try something like this out.

The above makes me feel as though the old way I used to use flour resist is now quite boring!

Flour Resist

After the article in the latest Quilting Arts about Flour Resist, I just couldn't "resist" trying it again.
It is going to be hard to wait for this to cure, before I can wash off the flour - I want to see the results NOW.

Metalwork - more pics

At last I have managed to take some half-decent pictures of the metalwork hanging. (I only posted detail shots in my previous post as the full shots were blurred.) Here's the full view.
I've cut up several more cans and am planning more in this vein. Must try and find a way of doing the embossing, that isn't so hard on the hands.

Journal

I'm still making fabric beads ad infinitum, but thought I'd post these pictures of a journal that I made after I had seen the journals of Sue Bleiweiss.
I screenprinted this fabric long ago when I took a screenprinting class. The design is partly from a serviette and partly my own made-up doodles. I backed it with some batting and quilted it with some silver thread.
I used satin for the inside, but wouldn't use it again - too shiny and slippery - I would have preferred a cotton lining. But now I know. I sewed in 3 signatures of white and other coloured papers. I used old laminated posters (of which there are always plenty in an academic environment) as the stiffening, as I do not access to Peltex (which I think is what Sue uses). It worked fairly well, although it could be stiffer. But all in all, I'm pretty happy, for a first journal. Thanks to Sue Bleiweiss for inspiration!

Cats on my stuff

Silliness

Some silliness for those who have young children:

If you ever see a bunny
whose nose is very runny,
you might think it's funny
but it's (s)not!

Fabric Beads

Ahhhhh, another madness to get obsessive about. Fabric beads. These are just a few of the beads I've finished in the last few days. They are really addictive. Can't wait to begin using them in something - it will have to be nice and three-dimensional.
They're intriguing little things and I keep being drawn to pick one up and look at it closer. Ah well, there are worse things to be addicted to. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Cyber Fyber - I've joined!

I'm thrilled that I am going to be part of the Cyber Fyber Exhibition!
I am trading for Postcard No 156 and this weekend will give some thought to which postcard to post to Susan Lenz, or to perhaps making a new one especially for the occasion.
Many, many thanks to Jackie of Blissfully Imperfect who mentioned this to me and got me curious enough to go and take a look. Apparantly I am currently the only representative of the whole continent of Africa. There are many like me, I assure you, so that is not representative of fibre artists in this neck of the woods. But I am glad we are going to be in there and will attempt to keep the African flag flying high!

Metalwork

These are going to be "teaser" pics, not intentionally, but because the rest of the pics I took are tooooo blurry. I will re-try, but here are the close-ups, so long.
It feels like armour to me, and since much of it was done with the hulking big bandage on my hand, and with me feeling like I needed some armour against life's assaults, that's what I am sticking with.. no title yet, but I'm also not 100% sure that it's finished yet, even though it's up and hanging

Carpal tunnel repair

This is such a clever little operation and it has really, really helped. Above is my left hand, which was done about two years ago - you can faintly see a scar running from the wrist crease to about halfway up m y palm. I call it my "wealth line".

Below is the "Can hold needle - will sew" shot. I have to spend just TWO more days in this bandage, which has been a monumental pain in the {insert own body part here}. It's bulky, hot in this sticky summer weather and by now, much grubbier than the picture (thank goodness I took that shot some time back!)
But I have to say the orthopaedic surgeon has done a fine job - and of course I have a design worked out for a new work based on this experience. Making lemonade and all that...

Edit 4 March 2008
... and here it is just after the bandage came off. Still very red, but that will fade.